The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1887-06-18
TRIED AS BY FIRE.

A pathetic letter from mother, who
had lost her only daughter, came to our
hands few days ago. 1t was psalm
rather than lamentation, the minor and
the major strains alternating with the
modulations of faith and hope, the chant
of a disappointed affection blending with
the pecan Of higher trust. There was no
surrender to the darkness of despair, but
we could well believe that the furnace
had been seven times heated"
We asked ourselves, What fire is it
that has heated the furnace Of affection
for this suffering soul?
It is nearly fifteen years since we stood
in the streets of Boston, and saw store
after store, block after block, melt under
the furnace heat of great confagration.
The earnings of lifetime were swept
away in q few hours. Men stood face to
face with scorching adversely: some of
them went back to their homes penniless
and crushed Figuratively, rs indeed
literally, the furnace for them had been
heated seven times hotter; but this was a
fire which did not ravsge the affections.
It destroyed capital, it scourged the
great business center of the city, but left
almost untouched, its homea. Happy
were the men who could leave that terri
BILE scene and return to homes where the
fire of love burned on the hearth, where
wife and children furnished new strength
and inspiration for the task OF building a
new fortune on the ashes of the oldl The
fire which melted iron and made granite
crumble summoned men to a new ordeal.
It was test, not only of fortune, but of
character. There were men who came
out unscathed, without the smell of
smoke upon their garments. The tiercest
trials in life may furnish only exhilara-
ton for the soul, when the conscience
and the affections are bulwarks against
the tempest. The difference is great be.
tween an adversely that assails us from
without and one which strikes at the
very center of our lives. For the human
heart there can be DO insurance against
lose, unless it be the very love which
makes loss most keenly felt.
Whence, again we ask, was the fame
which furnished this scorching sorrow for
the mothers hearth Was it not kindled
in the very heart itself? What are the
fires that burn without compared with
those that burn within? Love is bright
fame in the soul; it sheds its genial tenn
perature over our lives, but at times
breaks forth with volcanic fire. The very
flame which made life worth living is the
flame by which we are consumed. Is
there no way we may ask, to render the
soul fre-proof? Not unless we make it
love-proof. What greater calamity could
befall a man or woman than the possess
sion of nature which cannot be kindl-
ed, heart of asbestos, that never flames
or CLOVIS with the inspiration of affection,
that never flashes into the exuberance OF
JOY, or knows the deep genial warmth of
holy union with some other soul? Sad is
the life that is completed in itself, which
finds no response in other lives, and
needs no other life to make it whole.
In the thought that the fire of affection
through which like the Hebrew children,
we must pass, is fire, not of wrath from
the bolt OF an angry God, but the very
flame which has been kindled on the
altar of our hearts, do we find mitiga-
ton for our SORROWS. Our suffering itself
is a pledge of our love, the sign that we
do not live in and of ourselves. The
Affections that are born out of the purest
emotions we can cherish, refine the soul
without charming or staining it.
In such affections God has opened to
the soul two great doorways of relief: one
lies in the thought that sit is well with
the child" that it has entered, not into a
diminished, but into greater opportu-
nifty, the other lies in the thought that it
is the "Lord that gave and the Lord that
taketh away" When the soul can believe
that the universe is governed by Eternal
Goodness, then in the faith of Job, it can
cry out, BLESSED be the name of the
Lordr' Then, like the Hebrew children,
it passes unscorched through the flame,
or like the Hebrew prophet at Horeb,
finds the voice OF God In the burning
bush, and the bush is not consumed. =
Christian Register.